Review RPG Codex Review: Darth Roxor on Disappointment, thy name is Pillars of Eternity

[Suicidal]

I remember that some time when everyone was still talking about Oblivion there was some guy who argued that the game does not provide any challenge because it's the player's fault and if he wants challenge then he should play the game as he would "adventure in real life" - throw away his weapon when running away from enemies (to run faster, geddit?), only sleep in inns at nights and other stupid shit. Adding self-imposed restrictions to limit resting sounds just as stupid to me as Oblivion adventurer guy's advice (even though when playing IE games I did try to limit resting simply because resting in some dungeons carried the risk of having enemies ambush you)

You want to limit resting? Then add food costs, time limits on quests, spawn enemies on your ass if you rest or make a simple text pop-up saying "You can hear enemies patrolling this hall, it would be unwise to rest here now" and only allow resting on dungeon floors once you've cleared them out and make exiting dungeons to rest outside difficult as well. PoE wanted to do limited resting but failed because at any time you can safely fuck off from a dungeon, go to the nearest town and restock your campfires. Lords of Xulima had a nice food system where every step you took used food and resting used a lot of food and the cost of food was astronomical compared to your riches at lower levels (it kind stopped being an issue by midgame, though).

Also trash mobs are trash in both Baldur's Gate games and PoE, don't pretend otherwise. The only difference is that in Baldur's Gate 2 there is a much larger variety of them, so it's slightly less trash but still trash nonetheless.

 

[Jasede]

You must be retarded. In PoE all my spells I need come back after I fight a mob, therefore draining no resources. In BG 2 I need to be careful with casting spells because I won't have them afterwards.

Unless I'm one of you braindead fucking morons that can't decide for themselves that, just maybe, it wasn't intended for you to have your team -SLEEP EIGHT HOURS- after every fight. God, you guys are fucking stupid. Self-imposed, my ass.

 

[roshan]

I've never played PNP, but I played all the IE games using no healing potions, no resurrection spells, resting only after running out of all (or almost all) spells, and it was fucking fun that way. It didn't have shit to do with any sort of real life logic, larping or PNP, that was just how I played, and that was how I had my fucking fun. I enjoyed playing through every battle such that all my characters had to survive. I enjoyed casting greater command after expending my cast of mass dominate. I enjoyed not going into every battle hasted and with all my best spells intact. It was fun casting only what I needed because I had to reserve my main spells for bigger battles. And it was fun going into battles without maxed HP, with only my worst spells left, with all my abilities used up, and win such that everyone survived. It was a different experience, it made me adapt, it made me think, it was a shitload of FUN.

In POE, characters recover most of their abilities after battle, they autoresurrect after being killed, and regenerate all hitpoints. I have no choice how I play, everyone is autoresurrected, autohealed and autorestored, and I am left bored and with no challenge. And no fucking variety since my characters at the start of every combat are always in optimal condition, everything is always exactly the same. Those people who are bitching about resting in the IE games - are you just so fucking stupid that you can't realize that the only functional difference between POE and the IE games in terms of resting mechanics is that the rest button effectively gets "autopressed" after every battle in Sawyer's piece of shit abomination of a game? If you can't come to this realization by yourself and need it pointed out to you, then you are a complete and utter moron.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I remember that some time when everyone was still talking about Oblivion there was some guy who argued that the game does not provide any challenge because it's the player's fault and if he wants challenge then he should play the game as he would "adventure in real life" - throw away his weapon when running away from enemies (to run faster, geddit?), only sleep in inns at nights and other stupid shit. Adding self-imposed restrictions to limit resting sounds just as stupid to me as Oblivion adventurer guy's advice

Well said man, it's unbelievable how low PoE haters and IE apologists are ready to sink, but here they are witth even esteemed oldfag Bros like Jasede arguening for "if the feature is to powerful just larp and dont use it!!" in place of sensible design. Mind you PoE failed to limit resting (like you said), but that's a different discussion.

 

[Jasede]

Come on, there's a difference between self-imposed Oblivion-style difficulty LARPing and not abusing a feature that was clearly implemented to be used with self-moderation. How often do I have to explain this? Consider the lack of resting limitation in BG a concession to players new to D&D or bad players and it all falls into place.

Look, here's a thing: when you criticize me for saying you should moderate your resting, then it's the same thing as defending when someone wants to quicksave after every firefight in an FPS. Yes, technically you can save after every bullet or before every choice, but it doesn't mean you should. And that has nothing to do with LARPing and all with you trying to play the game in a way that's reasonable and works for you. If you want to tank the difficulty because you're busy or bad, you have the option; but it's disingenuous to pretend that's the way they expected the average experience to be like.

Why even talk about this? We debated this topic to death in 2006 or 2007.

 

[Vault Dweller]

You must be retarded. In PoE all my spells I need come back after I fight a mob, therefore draining no resources. In BG 2 I need to be careful with casting spells because I won't have them afterwards.

Unless you hit the rest button.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Look, here's a thing: when you criticize me for saying you should moderate your resting, then it's the same thing as defending when someone wants to quicksave after every firefight in an FPS.

Which is why checkpoints instead of saving is an improvement in game design and what games always needed. Why even play at all if you load the game amirite

Unless you hit the rest button.

Oh snappy reply it is what i expect from a witty individual such as yourself

 

[Ulrox]

Why even talk about this? We debated this topic to death in 2006 or 2007.

I feel the same way about this whole thread... I've read every bit of it and dont really have anything to add to the discussion because I feel like I've considered, every, single, angle, of this conversation.

I played PoE on hard for a while, but realised that I didnt want to constantly walk back to town due to resting limitations, so I put it back on normal simply so I wouldn't have to get bothered by loading screen after loading screen. I feel like, if you're to put limitations on how many times you can rest, atleast make it so that it doesn't take forever to load every area. I had to put the game on my SSD and it still loaded too slowly. I suspect I'd have to overclock my cpu to be able to play without intolerable loading screens.

 

[roshan]

The difference between LARPing artificial difficulty (such as by dropping swords) is that this is really all in the player's head. They are literally creating mechanics in their head that don't even exist in the game. Whereas no rest spamming, no healing potions, no resurrections, not using certain items or spells - this does not involve imagining anything, the mechanics are in the game, you are simply refusing to use them because you know that you are too good to indulge in them. A different level of expertise requires different rules.

Take Fallout 2. Lots of people have played through Fallout 2 ironman style. What stopped them from reloading once they got killed? There is no mechanical reason for why they wouldn't just reload after getting killed, yet, they aren't larping, they are just refusing to indulge. I just tried out Invisibility Inc, and it's interesting because you can customize the rules of your campaign by toggling different settings on and off. What grognards do when they play older games is basically the same thing - toggling various campaign settings, except relying on their own self control and expertise to follow through on such decisions. Only a pathetic person would try to conflate the LARPing of casuals with ironmanning, no resurrections, no rest spamming and various other grognardy ways of enjoying RPGs.

 

[Ulrox]

Oh snappy reply it is what i expect from a witty individual such as yourself

Well, Vault Dweller has a point, in that limited resting can work in some games. Obsidian specifically took this system out of might and magic - but the main difference is that in might and magic you can buy more supplies than 4. If you find an Inn with more supplies you can end up with something like 18 supplies or more. It's more of a gold drain on you than a limitation to rest.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Unless you hit the rest button.

Oh snappy reply it is what i expect from a witty individual such as yourself

The fact is that in the IE games you could rest almost anywhere and restore or change your spells whenever you felt like it. Claiming otherwise is incorrect, to say the least.

 

[roshan]

Unless you hit the rest button.

Yes and if you play Fallout 2 ironman, you need to be careful in combat... Unless you hit the reload button. That does not invalidate ironmanning as a legitimate way to play and enjoy the game. Similarly various self imposed rules as to the usage of different mechanics in the IE games are also perfectly legitimate ways of playing the game (Of course this is not going to make sense if you are the sort of person who needs menu options and Steam achievements to tell you how you should play a game). Mechanics in the IE games are open ended enough that you are able to choose a more difficult experience if you please.

On the other hand, there is no such possibility with POE. The game autoresurrects, autorestores, and autoheals you after every battle, so that not only are you not able to choose a higher level of difficulty or challenge, but you end up playing every battle with the exact same party all the time, in almost the exact same state. It creates boredom and tedium. In the IE games, even simple trash combats could be interestingly deadly if you walked into them with very little HP left. Yes, there is of course a rest button, but it is up to you to set your own wussyness level.

 

[roshan]

Unless you hit the rest button.

Oh snappy reply it is what i expect from a witty individual such as yourself

The fact is that in the IE games you could rest almost anywhere and restore or change your spells whenever you felt like it. Claiming otherwise is incorrect, to say the least.

Nice, hope you had fun demolishing your own strawman.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Unless you hit the rest button.

Yes and if you play Fallout 2 ironman, you need to be careful in combat... Unless you hit the reload button.

Reloading and resting aren't the same thing. Hint: one's an in-game mechanic, the other isn't.

 

[Vault Dweller]

...Similarly various self imposed rules as to the usage of different mechanics in the IE games are also perfectly legitimate ways of playing the game ... Mechanics in the IE games are open ended enough that you are able to choose a more difficult experience if you please.

On the other hand, there is no such possibility with POE. The game autoresurrects, autorestores, and autoheals you after every battle...

Self-imposed rules to fix the game's shortcomings (in order to proclaim that the game in question is superior to others in its class because it allows you not to use certain mechanics) are a sign that the game in question is poorly designed.

PoE design isn't any different (they tried to fix the problem with a band-aid and failed) but when it comes to self-imposed rules you're as free to restrict yourself to create a desired difficulty levels as in any other game (i.e. go full retard).

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Roleplaying

 

[Jasede]

Ah, fuck off.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Never really understood all the regular arguments over rest spamming or what the game "lets" us do. I just play the way I find most fun which is restricting resting as I would in a pnp session.

Perhaps it's because I first played pnp before crpgs, and when Pool of Radiance came along I was just blown away that I could replicate a DnD experience without requiring a DM or preparation. It never occurred to me to try to exploit the game or anything like that as I wouldn't want to play pnp that way either. When BG came along it was the same. In BG2 I restricted resting to a couple of times in each dungeon and didn't use the retarded Cloak of Cheese which neutered beholders.

It obviously comes down to how one enjoys playing. Some like resting after every battle and always using their best spells etc. Fair enough. I preferred battling to survive with rapidly diminishing resources, using the last dregs of my spellbook in different ways to get out of tough situations. That's why the likes of per encounter abilities and auto regen feel very different to the way I played those old games.

Nothing wrong with either approach obviously, but I don't really understand the arguments about abusing stuff just "because the game lets me do it". Games have to cater to a wide range of players with different skills and preferences and ultimately that can result in a degree of freedom which can be abused. If you have more fun doing that then great, but if not I don't see the point in it.

 

[Volrath]

Baldur's gate 3

http://forums.beamdog.com/discussio...ture-y-the-unofficial-thread-for-this-project

Yes, I'm aware. I own all the infinity engine enhanced editions and I'm incredible hyped for this - Beamdog's BG2 extra content was of very high quality imo.

 

[roshan]

Reloading and resting aren't the same thing. Hint: one's an in-game mechanic, the other isn't.

Bullshit. That's a completely arbitrary distinction between two different but essentially similar in purpose "reset buttons" and you know it. Reloading is just as much as gameplay mechanic as resting, otherwise, games like Banner Saga would not restrict reloads as part of their basic gameplay principles.

 

[hivemind]

Well, but that just means that reloading is a gameplay mechanic in Banner Saga.
You can't just say that because it's a mechanical feature in one game it's true for all others.

 

[Mangoose]

So who wants to hire me as a writer?

 

[roshan]

Self-imposed rules to fix the game's shortcomings (in order to proclaim that the game in question is superior to others in its class because it allows you not to use certain mechanics) are a sign that the game in question is poorly designed.

No, not poorly designed, just openly designed. You are free to set the parameters of your own gameplay experience. Whether you want to go ironman, or no resting outside of inns, or no clerics in the party, or whatever crosses your mind as a fun or interesting way to play. I'm not sure where this idea comes from that a designer should be some sort of creepy pervert who tries to carefully control every aspect of a player's experience - that usually really just makes for shitty RPGs (see POE).

PoE design isn't any different (they tried to fix the problem with a band-aid and failed) but when it comes to self-imposed rules you're as free to restrict yourself to create a desired difficulty levels as in any other game (i.e. go full retard).

There is a difference between "left wing" design in an RPG (agreeable to casuals and SA posters) and "right wing" design (preferred by grognards). An RPG can address the exact same problem in two completely different ways depending on the mindset of the developers. Take the example of useless statistics. I think most people can agree that having some stats give a certain class powerful benefits while most other stats are useless dump stats is not good design. POE addressed this problem by effectively making every stat dump stat. You don't really need to think out or plan a character properly, you can literally dump all the stats and still end up with a viable character that can beat the game. No thinking involved, no difficulty, no planning. Everyone succeeds because the game is inclusive! On the other hand, in Banner Saga, they made each stat important in different ways, and so you actually had to think carefully before adding to any of the statistics. Similarly, POE "solves" rest spamming by giving you a free rest after ever battle. Now neither do you need to exercise self restraint, nor are you left with guilty feeling for abusing resting mechanics! Inclusive and the casuals neither get upset nor feel pathetic.

The problem with such design is that grognardy gameplay is effectively written out of the equation. Do you want to actually have a fighter that is shit at fighting, for whatever reason? Not possible. Do you want to enter combat with suboptimal characters? Again, not possible.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

What VD said. Also, when you reload after a botched fight, it doesn't mean that your party somehow managed to magicall turn back time. There's no ingame explanation because safe/reload isn't an ingame mechanic.

On the other hand, if your party rest for 8 hours, this is what is literally happening in the gameworld. The IE games basically said "yeah it doesn't matter if your party decides to take regular naps in a monster infested dungeon, you can spend weeks or even years of game time there, who gives a shit"

 

[roshan]

Well, but that just means that reloading is a gameplay mechanic in Banner Saga.
You can't just say that because it's a mechanical feature in one game it's true for all others.

Only when developers take steps to restrict it does it become a gameplay mechanic? By that logic, resting is not a gameplay mechanic in the IE games either because they did almost nothing to restrict it. Also by Vault Dweller's logic character creation and party creation are also not mechanical features of RPGs because they are done outside of gameplay, before you start "playing". As far as I am converned, everything that happens after you double click that icon on your desktop is part of the game. You can abuse the reload button in practically every RPG ever released, and that includes Fallout, Arcanum, Torment, POE, and using such a feature fundamentally alters the way you play a game. You can take more risks in combat because you can just reload. You can pick that lock till it jams because you can just reload. You can make stupid choices because you can just reload. Etc. Only through self-imposed restrictions such as ironmanning can the mechanical/gameplay effects of the reload button be mitigated.

Just because one is able to justify reload spamming but not rest spamming to himself does not make either one of them non-mechanical or non-gameplay in nature.

 

[Jasede]

There are consequences; there's some really annoying random encounters which should let even the thickest, most idiotic player know you're not really meant to play a party of narcoleptics.